The Metroid series is defined by its comprehensive world
design, quick pacing, lonely atmosphere, and subtle narrative. This is the
reason the latest entry in the series, Other M, is reviled by the majority of
the fanbase. While it's still enjoyable to an extent thanks to some good
individual level design, Other M is marred with an excessively sentimental,
melodramatic storyline that breaks up the game into pieces through long
cutscenes coming at the end of many segments, all while destroying the flow,
freedom and subtlety the series had previously held close.
However, Other M may not have been the start of darkness for
Metroid. Many of that game's problems were birthed from an entry in series that
was released eight years prior to it: Metroid Fusion.
Metroid Fusion was released in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance
as the fourth entry in the Metroid series. It was released on the same day as
Metroid Prime for the Gamecube. Metroid Prime, a fantastic take on the series
that took it into first-person 3D, was made by Nintendo's new friends at Retro
Studios. However, Nintendo didn't have much faith in the project because of its
first-person perspective, which they thought would alienate fans of Metroid and
fans of Nintendo in general. Fortunately enough, Nintendo had a new
traditionally-styled, sidescrolling Metroid game developed by their good old
R&D1 team (of whom had developed all of the previous Metroid games) in the
form of Metroid Fusion sitting around for them to fall back on. So fans who
were willing to try something new could buy Prime while fans who just wanted
more Super Metroid could buy Fusion.
Let me just say this right now: If you want more Super
Metroid, play Prime, not Fusion.
